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THE SPOFFORD FAMILY ASSOCIATION. AT a meeting held in Boston, March 23, 1886, to consider the question of celebrating the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the arrival in this country, in 1638; of John Spofford or Spofforth or Spafard,--the named being variously spelled in records where his name appears,--it was decided to form an association for the purpose of promoting a friendly acquaintance among persons bearing the family name, and also to hold a reunion some time in the year 1888, which should be a suitable commemoration of the event in question. A temporary organization was effected by the choice of Philip Augustus Spofford, of Malden, as president; Austin A. Spofford, of Lawrence, as secretary; and John A. Spofford, of Malden, as treasurer. In furtherance of the object in view, it was voted to hold an informal picnic on June 17, 1886, on the farm in Georgetown, Mass., where the progenitor of our race in America spent many years, the spot being now in possession of Mr. Charles Sewall Spofford. For a report of the doings of that day we are indebted to Mr. Hiram N. Harriman, himself of Spofford descent, and one of the editors of the Georgetown Aavocate, from the columns of which paper we make the extract. "At least five hundred persons were present. Had the morning opened fine, twice that number might have been expected. They came by rail from all directions, and as the old mansion is a long half-mile from the station, barges were provided to carry all who wished to ride. Two large barge-loads came from Lowell, via Haverhill, and vehicles of every size and shape brought families from the neighboring towns. The old house was gayly decorated with flags and bunting, and nearly every room was open to the use of the family. In it were exhibited the old cradle which rocked several generations, the foot stove by which the matrons kept their extremities warm during the long sermons of Parsons Chandler and Braman, the sword and belt, a part of the horse equipments, and other articles of interest were viewed with pleasure by the company. The barn was open to the visitors, the floor cleared, and the Georgetown Orchestra stationed there to furnish music for the entertainment of all. A few old-fashioned quadrilles and contras were danced, and we noticed dancing as spryly as the youngest, Mr. S. C. Heald, of Lynn, over eighty years of age, who married a Spofford. The company visited many places on the hill, enshrined as present or former homes of their race; the primitive site in the field, with nothing except a more luxuriant growth of grass to indicate it, but carried down from generation to generation by tradition, was viewed by an interested party. A flag marked the site of the second home of the pioneers where many of the children of the third generation were born. The old Col. Daniel homestead represents the fourth generation. Dinner was spread on tables in the old mansion, in the orchard, and under the shade of trees in the yard. It was a basket picnic, and yet everybody's basket was free to any who wished to enjoy the contents. There was food enough for three times as many people as attended. Hot coffee and tea were provided by the management, in abundance. During the day a business meeting was opened with prayer by Rev. Levi Rodgers, of Georgetown; records of last meeting read and approved. John C. Spofford, of Everett, was chosen President of the day, and Austin A. Spofford, Secretary. The Constitution drafted by the committee was read and adopted. It is as follows:-- CONSTITUTION OF THE SPOFFORD FAMILY ASSOCIATION. PREAMBLE. We, the descendants of JOHN SPOFFORD, who came to these shores in the year 1638, and established a home at Rowley, Mass., feeling that the bonds of relationship should more closely unite those of a common blood, do hereby form ourselves into an Association for the cultivation and cherishing of that acquaintance and amity which should exist between our members. And we establish this as our Constitution. ARTICLE I. This Association shall be known as 'THE SPOFFORD FAMILY ASSOCIATION.' ARTICLE II. SECTION 1. The officers of the Association shall consist of a President, fifteen Vice-Presidents, a Secretary, two Assistant Secretaries, and a Treasurer. SECT. 2. A committee of three shall be elected by the Association to serve as a Committee on Finance. SECT. 3. The President, first and second Vice-Presidents, Secretary, Treasurer, and Finance Committee, together with seven members to be chosen at large by the Association, shall form an Executive Committee. SECT. 4. The first election for the various officers and committees of the Association shall occur on June 17, 1886; the second election shall occur at the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary in 1888; and the succeeding elections shall be held at the triennial meetings thereafter, or if such meetings should not occur at the usual time, at the next regular meeting. ARTICLE III. SECTION 1. It shall be the duty of the President to preside at all meetings at which he is present, and to appoint such committees as the Association shall direct. SECT. 2. It shall be the duties of the Vice-Presidents to preside at all meetings in the absence of the President, priority of election of such Vice-Presidents as are present to determine which Vice-President shall preside. SECT. 3. It shall be the duty of the Secretary to keep a true record of the meetings of the Association, and to inform the members of the time and place of all meetings. The Assistant Secretaries shall be under the direction of the Secretary, and their duties shall be such as he may appoint. SECT. 4. It shall be the duty of the Treasurer to collect and receive all moneys of the Association, and to expend such moneys under the direction and control of the Finance Committee, and to render an account of the same at the regular meetings of the Association, or whenever such account be called for by the Executive Committee. SECT. 5. It shall be the duty of the Executive Committee to appoint the time of year, and the place of all meetings of the Association, and to call such meetings whenever the interests of the Association may require, or when the Association shall so direct; to appoint all committees not specially directed by the Association to be appointed by the President; and to make all arrangements for the meetings and exercises of the Association. ARTICLE IV. Any direct descendant of John Spofford and his wife Elizabeth Scott, or any one connected by marriage with a person so descended, shall be eligible to membership in this Association. ARTICLE V. Regular meetings of the Association shall be held triennially after the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary in 1888, and at such times as the Executive Committee shall from time to time appoint. ARTICLE VI. This Constitution may be amended at any regular meeting of the Association, all amendments to be proposed through the Executive Committee. All amendments shall be proposed in writing to the Executive Committee at least one month before the meeting at which such amendment shall be acted upon by the Association. The Executive Committee shall have power to propose or reject all such amendments. ARTICLE VII. Cushing's Manual shall be the parliamentary guide in the deliberations of this Association. Under the foregoing Constitution, the following officers were chosen:-- For President.--Ainsworth R. Spofford, Washington, D. C. First Vice-President.--Paul N. Spofford, New York City. Second.--Charles A. Spofford, Deer Isle, Me. Third.--Philip A. Spofford, Malden, Mass. Fourth.--Joseph L. Spofford, New York City. Fifth.--Caleb W. Spofford, Washington, D. C. Sixth.--Nelson Spofford, Haverhill, Mass. Seventh.--George W. Spofford, Chicago, Ill. Eighth.--John L. Spofford, San Francisco, Cal. Ninth.--Dr. Chas. Spofford, Groveland, Mass. Tenth.--Chas. Spofford, New York City. Eleventh.--Nathan H. Spafford, Milton, Mass. Twelfth.--D. Webster Spofford, Georgetown, Mass. Thirteenth.--Augustus M. Spofford, Danvers, Mass. Fourteenth.--Parker Spofford, Bucksport, Me. Fifteenth.--Frederick A. Spofford, Lowell, Mass. For Orator.--Hon. Richard S. Spofford, Newburyport, Mass. Secretary.--Austen A. Spofford, Lawrence, Mass. Treasurer.--John A. Spofford, Maplewood, Mass. Assistant Secretaries.--Edgar L. Spafford, Troy, N. Y.; Joseph H. Spafford, Milton, Mass. Finance Committee.--John C. Spofford, Everett, Mass.; Philip A. Spofford, Malden, Mass.; Joseph H. Spafford, Milton, Mass.; Joseph L. Spofford, New York City. Executive Committee.--Charles S. Spofford, Georgetown, Mass.; Edward F. Spofford, Maplewood, Mass.; Alfred B. Noyes and Hiram N. Harriman, Georgetown, Mass.; Augustus M. Spofford, Danvers, Mass. Immediately upon the conclusion of the business meeting, the chairman introduced Hon. Richard S. Spofford, of Newburyport, who made a brief address, which is given below. Mr. Spofford, after thanking the assembly for the honor conferred upon him in his designation as their orator, continued as follows:-- 'We have no occasion to entertain any other sentiment than one of modest yet conscious pride in the sturdy virtues of the race from which we have sprung. We know little, indeed, of our first ancestor, the earliest settler, prior to his emigration in 1638, beyond the fact that he was the son of a dissenting clergyman, the Rev. John Spofford, long vicar of a church in the West Riding of Yorkshire, known as the Minster of the Moors, and that he was of that family of Saxon origin which had given its name to one of the oldest towns and castles in England. But what is of more importance to us, we have information enough of his personal character to know that he brought to these shores a spirit of manly independence, of heroic fortitude and self-reliance, well fitting him for the trials and sacrifices to which, by the imperious force of circumstances, he was thereafter subjected. He was not merely a colonist from the Old World, but a pioneer of the New, illustrating, as such, that race tendency by which his descendants have been scattered far and wide, since by placing his house here in the then unbroken wilderness near the foot of the Bald Hills, his was among the earliest of the frontier settlements of the country, and surrounded by all those perils and drawbacks to which her everextending frontier has always been exposed. Living now, as we do, in the midst of populous commonwealths, and in a country whose continental limits reach from sea to sea, it is a strange reflection that within two hundred years the first dwellers upon the soil where we now stand were doing picket duty, as it were, in their day and generation upon one of the outposts of American cililization. The war whoop of the Indian, resounding with its terrible alarums through the stillness of the primeval forest, was to our common ancestors, John and Elizabeth Spofford, as to their children and grandchildren, no unfamiliar sound. We may possibly imagine, but it is difficult to describe, the tragic emotions of this solitary homestead, then far removed from the sheltering arms and sympathies of community life, never more needful than under such circumstances, when, for example, the tidings came that but three miles distant, and between the homestead and the supporting reserve of the fellow-colonists, their townsman, and probably their nearest neighbor, with his wife and children, had fallen victims to their death-dealing tomahawk, or when the northen heavens, lurid with the light of blazing Haverhill, told too plainly the proximity of the savage enemy following with relentless fury his bloody trail. Yet these are but the prominent incidents in the daily and nightly agitations to which the lives of our ancestors were accustomed, well calculated, indeed, to stir the heart with a grateful and reverent sense of obligation whenever contemplated by their more fortunate descendants. 'From a family thus trained to hardship and self-reliance, it was to be expected that no proof of patriotic devotion would be wanting when, in the progress of events, their country called to arms, first in the prolonged contest with the French, and then, when confronted by the momentous issues of the War for Independence. In all of these conflicts, as well at Crown Point and Ticonderoga as at Lexington and Bunker Hill, and upon other battle-fields of the Revolution, and in the military struggles of later years, the representatives of our family have played no inconspicuous part. It was from the ancient homestead through which we have all walked with pious steps to-day, that Col. Daniel Spofford, a grandson of the first settler, went forth to command the regiment with which he joined the army under Washington at Cambridge, and it was with no undeserved distinction that he was afterwards elected a member of the convention by which the Constitution of Massachusetts was framed. 'In the earlier generations, indeed at each successive epoch, the men of our race have been for the most part cultivators of the soil, and they have contributed in no restricted measure to the execution of that Herculean work by which the wilderness of the western world has been reclaimed, and these fair homes and fruitful fields, with their clustering towns and cities, have been established throughout the country, and especially along these rock-bound New England shores. We are wont to recall with pride those lofty virtues of which the early settlers were the exponents and for which they are held in the world's heart in grateful remembrance; but how often do we pause to think at what a cost of physicial toil, of days of rigorous labor, the mere material result has been accomplished of clearing the ground for those beneficient institutions whose development has accompanied our growth? The stone walls alone of New England, it is said, outmeasure to-day, on the basis of their cost in labor, estimated by modern standards, the value of the land itself; and for one, I never look upon them, mossgrown and gray with age, but with a sentiment of respect for their builders, to whose patient and determined labors they stand as a not unworthy monument. 'But while the descendants of John and Elizabeth Spofford have been chiefly devoted to agricultural pursuits, there are not wanting many examples illustrative of their qualities in other departments. We have had our full number of men educated in the various professions, and as respects that of medicine, especially, I should be unfilial, indeed, if I were to omit the remark that from generation to generation, from the colonial period until now, the family record has never failed to embrace names of many distinguished and beloved physicians. In the mechanics and inventive arts, too, there have been numerous representatives of the family deserving of mention, while to various branches of literature it has made contributions of permanent and recognized value. 'Of our race sprang one of the greatest, and, taking the period of his life into account, perhaps the greatest of philanthropists; I mean George Peabody, whose name is a word of honor on every lip by which the English tongue is spoken, and whose life of benefaction might well have inspired that noble verse of his friend, the English laureate:-- "Howe'er it be, it seems to me 'The name of Paul Spofford, of the great shipping house of Spofford & Tileston in New York, was one which for half a century, while yet the American merchant marine contested with Great Britain for supremacy upon the seas, was closely identified with the mercantile growth of that metropolis. And coming down to our day, what race or family would not be proud to recognize upon its roll of fame a name so distinguished as that of our kinsman, the librarian of Congress, Ainsworth R. Spofford, one among the most learned of American scholars, as versatile, as learned, and standing in his peculiar province without a peer in the world; or that of his brother, the late Judge Henry M. Spofford, of Louisiana, distinguished alike for his professional and personal accomplishments, who, but for the storms of political faction, would have honored with his presence the Senate of the United States? 'Here, in conclusion, I desire to add but a single word. There is one incident which has occasioned me regret to-day. While rejoicing in the presence of many members of the family of Spofford and its connections, some of them, too, in far advanced years, I grieve to think that the honored genealogist of the race, Dr. Jeremiah Spofford, of Groveland, to whose patient and intelligent research we are all of us so much indebted, could not have lived to participate in an event like the present, the success of which will be greatly due to the work he accomplished, and which, in his generous affection for his race, he dedicated to all the descendants of John and Elizabeth Spofford.' Following the address of Mr. Spofford, a poem was read by the Rev. Mr. Rodgers, composed by Mrs. Lavina Spofford Weston, who is eighty-seven years and six months old. We give the following extracts:-- 'Our Father's God, to Thee we raise 'We bless Thy name, so many meet 'With joy we've met, with love we part: 'One boon we ask of heavenly grace, The exercises concluded with singing by the entire company, after which they adjourned to the old barn, where dancing was held. The committee and prominent guests were furnished with garnet satin ribbon badges with the Spofford family motto printed in gilt, 'Rayther Deathe Than False of Faythe.' Great credit is due to Mr. and Mrs. Austen A. Spofford, of Lawrence, who did nearly all the preliminary work of this gathering." On June 17, 1887, another similar gathering was held at the same place, for the renewal of the acquaintance so auspiciously begun the previous year. The exercises were of a less formal nature, consisting of prayer, a basket collation in the orchard, and reports concerning the progress made in arrangements for the reunion of 1888. Impromptu speeches were made by several representatives of the family, and an extended poem, replete with historical reminiscences, written by Mrs. Weston,--a lady who retains in advanced years a wonderful mental vigor,--was read by Mr. Henry W. Spafford, of Rutland, Vt. |